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Chile assimilated Boric’s election with questions about his cabinet

Santiago de Chile, Dec 20 (EFE).- Chile wakes up this Monday trying to assimilate Gabriel Boric’s remarkable election victory, a former student leader who will become the youngest president in the country’s history and who could build a far-left cabinet since Salvador Allende (1970-70). 1973). At just 35 – the minimum age to run – the left wing swept the polls, taking 55.8% of the vote against 44.1% of the far-right José Antonio Kast, also making history as the president of democracy with the most votes. , with 4.6 million votes. “As a sexual minority, I have no other alternative than Boric. Yesterday he said that we would build a new Chile together and I am very happy,” young Martín Flores told Efe. For Elizabeth Gálvez, 50, “a time of change will come with better health, education and decent housing,” she told Efe. Retired Sergio Caballero, on the other hand, is not so optimistic. “The underlying issue is that without economic growth there will be no money to meet people’s expectations. To spend you have to generate income,” he reminds Efe. TRANSVERSAL SUPPORT Its main stronghold is the Metropolitan Area, which houses the capital and where it wins with 60.3% of the vote, winning in most of the 32 communes. The coastal region of Valparaíso, the second most populous and where the harvest is 59.3%, is also an important stronghold. Against all odds, the left has won in 11 of the country’s 16 regions, going strong in those that voted in the first round for either Kast or the controversial liberal economist Franco Parisi. His first official act as president-elect was a meeting with the current president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, at La Moneda (the seat of government), through which hundreds of people came to receive him. After the official handshake, the two discussed the transfer of power, the pandemic and the reactivation of the economy, among other topics. “To me it seems relevant to the survival of the State beyond legitimate political differences which sometimes, as is the case, can be very large,” Boric said after the meeting. The meeting was attended by his campaign manager, Izkia Siches, and his main political coordinator, Giorgio Jackson, the two most powerful figures behind him and two possible names for ministerial letters. CABINET UNCERTAINTY While there are still more than two months to go for his inauguration and it is customary to announce a cabinet at the end of January, Boric said this Monday that he hopes to appoint him “as soon as possible” and will be the government “to provide certainty.” He hasn’t given any hints, beyond that it will be together and will have an independent figure. “I want to have people from the region who understand the diversity of our country,” he said after meeting Piñera. From his own command emerged figures such as former prosecutor Carlos Gajardo for Justice and economist Andrea Repetto for Finance or Economics. Entry into the Communist Party Government is assumed, from which names such as Karol Cariola or Camila Vallejo, two young representatives of the group’s new wing, are being considered. There is no certainty as to what role historic center-left parties will have in the government, such as the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party (PPD), which did not form the Boric coalition (Broad Front and Communist Party), but which supported him on the ballot. . WHAT ABOUT RIGHTS? Boric’s superb win raises questions on the right, who backed Kast en bloc in the second half and are now in the lowest hours. Although ultraconservatives assured Sunday night that his project was “not temporary”, there were already voices refusing to make him the main leader of the opposition Boric and asking to find a new face. Chile Vamos, the far-right ruling coalition and in which Kast’s Republican Party is not integrated, is meeting this Monday to explore the positions of the four parties that make up the bloc. “We represent half of Chile in Parliament (…), where we are almost evenly matched and the message we got yesterday was that we have to make a strong opposition,” said Francisco Chahuán, president of Renovación Nacional, the group’s main party. During the day, the president of the body that drafted the new Constitution, indigenous academic Elisa Loncón, assured that she trusted the new president’s support for the constituent process: “It is imperative that institutions put themselves at the service of the convention’s work.” Boric, who carries a broad social agenda under his arm, will have the task of implementing the new constitutional rules and will also have to heal the wounds of 2019’s strong social crisis and lead the post-pandemic recovery. (c) EFE Agency